Well, I have a solution..for the razors at least.

1. Get your razor.

2. Get your cordless drill and a 1/8″ bit.

3. Drill a hole through the end.

4. Raid the stash of ponytail holders

5.  Thread the ponytail holder through and tie a lark’s head knot.

6.  Hang it in the shower.  Repeat on all of the other crap.

Voila.

1. put it on a paper plate

2. find a knife

3. cut it in half (not all the way through)

4. fold it open

5. eat out of one side

6. dig out as much as you can

7. tear off the empty side, fold it in a little and eat it

8. see? no mess. repeat for the other side (or save it for later)

BTW, it’s a chicken burrito with black beans, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese and lettuce.

Here’s a nutrition calculator, if you care about that.

1. Create your signature in HTML in a text file named temp.html.  Here’s mine:

   <font style="font-family: Verdana;" size="1">
   Adam Spriggs //
   <a href="http://sprignaturemoves.com">sprignaturemoves.com</a> //
   <a href="http://yourchurch.tv">yourchurch.tv</a> //
   <a href="http://twitter.com/wvpv">twitter.com/wvpv</a> //
   816-555-1212<br>
   "what others do with talent, I do with obstinate fixation"
   </font>
   

2. Open temp.html in your browser — in another window
3. Enable Labs in Gmail
4. Enable the Canned Response feature
5. Compose a new email
6. Highlight your signature in the other browser window
7. Drag it into the body of your e-mail
8. In the Canned responses drop-down, choose new canned response.
9. Name it “html sig”
10. Click Settings turn off the signature
11. From now on when you compose an e-mail, simply choose “html sig” from the canned response drop-down.
12. Voilà

No, this isn’t the 5-dollar foot long deal.

This is more serious.

It’s about prayer.

If you’ve ever stood in a prayer circle, you’ve experienced the awkwardness of not knowing which way to hold your hands when it’s time to pray.  You wonder, hmmm, are they an over or under hand-holder?  It’s just plain embarassing to get it wrong.

Don’t guess wrong, let the people next to you decide.

Do what I do.

Just stick ‘em straight out.

Here’s a little tutorial on how to convert a video so it will play embedded in a PPT presentation.

1. First and foremost, PPT will only play video that mplay32.exe (Windows Media Player 5) will play.  If you want to test a video to see if it will work in PPT, click Start -> Run -> mplay32.exe.  Open your video and click the play button.  If you get an error, then it won’t work in PPT.  Here’s a good site with more information about video in PPT.

2. So you have a video that won’t play in mplay32.exe.  You need to convert it.  Enter the Open Source MediaCoder. You can download it here.

3. Install and fire up MediaCoder.  Click the Add button.  Click Add File, browse to the video file and click Open.

4. Click Video tab on the left side of the bottom pane.

5. In the Mode drop-down box, choose “Bitrate-based”.  Change the bitrate to 1500.

6. Set the Format and Container both to MPEG1

7. Click the Start button.  Wait until it finishes.

8. Open it in mplay32.exe and click the Play button.  If it plays, it’ll work in PPT.

9. Start PPT and insert the video by clicking Insert -> Movies and Sounds -> Movie from File.

10. Click the Automatically button so it plays when you visit the slide.  Resize the video box as needed.  If the video is in 16×9 format, you may need to set the background to black.  Start your presentation.  Voilà.

If you are a Google Desktop and Launchy user like me, you’ll know that the Win+Space hotkey doesn’t work in Launchy if Google Desktop is installed — even if the GD hotkeys are “disabled”.

Well, here’s the answer.  You’ll have to hack the registry, but it works good.  Here’s the gist.

1. Exit Google Desktop
2. Add this a “hot_key_flags” DWORD in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\Preferences
3. Set the value to “0″ to disable all hotkeys.
4. I rebooted afterward, but restarting GD may enable it.

Here’s the steps with pictures to illustrate his technique:

1. Open a cool photo in Fireworks (Yes, Ray Allen is cool, if you didn’t already know).

2. Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels

3. Set the max value in Output Level to 4

4. Add another effect: Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels. This time set the max Input Level to 4

6. Voila! Here’s what you get. You can tweak the levels on both sides to get the amount of posterization you want.

OK, so I have PDFs of several receipts that I need to fax into my health insurance company for flexible spending reimbursement.  The Windows Fax “printer” doesn’t allow me to string together multiple files, so I’m in a pickle.

I don’t have Adobe Acrobat, so I start Googling with “(combine|merge) (pdf|pdfs) -mac -apple -purchase -demo -trial -shareware -acrobat”

I find pdfsam, download & install it, add my PDFs, set the output file, click Run and, bam, a merged PDF.  Sweet.

I tried another option as well — pdftk.  If you’d rather go the commandline route, this’ll work just as good.

Anyway. Alt-Space is your friend.

Hit Alt-space, choose Move and then use the arrow keys to move the window back to the visible screen.

If you are like me and often have a lot of apps open in Windows, here’s an easy way to get more room in your taskbar. If you’re wondering why my taskbar is dark gray, I’m using the Zune theme for Windows XP.

®= right-click, © = click, © © = double-click

1. ® on an empty place on the taskbar, © Properties

2. © Customize next to the “Hide inactive icons” checkbox

3. Note the Behavior column

4. Next to each “Hide when inactive” entry change it to “Always Hide”

5. © OK twice and you’re done. Voila. Nice, huh?

Since I don’t work on Saturday or Sunday, I’d like to hide all columns that have a date that’s a Saturday or Sunday.

Here’s a little VB macro that will do the trick:

Sub header()

Dim eCol As Integer
Dim i As Integer

eCol = Cells(1, Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column

For i = 1 To eCol

With Cells(1, i)

If IsDate(.Value) Then
If (Weekday(.Value) = vbSunday) Or _
(Weekday(.Value) = vbSaturday) Then
.EntireColumn.Hidden = True
End If
End If

End With

Next i

End Sub

h/t Rowan

Just bought a new Dell SK-8135 keyboard off of eBay.  I have one at work and like it a lot.

It has some buttons on it that are sorta configurable — if you don’t mind poking around in the Windows Registry.

Start -> Run -> regedit

Browse to:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey

• 7 =  Browser home button – this will launch the default browser
• 15 = Mail button  – this will launch the default mail app.
• 16 = Music note button – this will launch the application associated with the .cda extension.  I changed this one to .mp3
• 17 = My Computer button
• 8 =  Calculator button

Make your changes, reboot and you’re good to go.

NOTE: I did this in Windows XP.  Not sure if this works in Windows Vista and Windows 7.   Anyone tried it?

1. Open a Word document
2. Highlight the text with your mouse
3. Hit Shift-F3 multiple times to cycle through the different cases

lowercase:

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

sentence uppercase:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

uppercase:

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG.

Here’s another installment in my Spriglet series.

Nothing’s more embarrassing than emerging from the bathroom with your zipper down.  To combat this possibility, I always, just after opening the bathroom door, poke my finger inside the zipper flap directly under the button of my pants. If my finger goes in, I turn right around and take care of it. If it stops, I let out a sigh of relief and continue on to what I was doing before nature called my name.

®= right-click, © = click, © © = double-click

1. ® on My Computer and choose “Manage”
2. © on “Services” in the left pane
3. © © on “Print Spooler” in the right pane
4. © the “Stop” button
5. Leave this window open and hit Windows-E to bring up an Explorer window
6. Drill down to c:\windows\system32\printers\spool
7. Highlight and delete all of the files in here
8. Back on the Print Spooler Properties window, © Start
9. © Start, © Settings, © Printers and Faxes, © © the printer with the stuck job
10. Hit F5 to refresh. All of the print jobs should now be gone.

UPDATE: Check out the shorter batch file method in the comments below. Thanks, White Panther.

If you’ve ever seen my car, you’d know that it’s not something that I obsess over at all.   In fact quite the contrary — I don’t care about it that much.   It gets me from here to there.   It’s not pretty but it’s functional.

I try to invest in it as little as possible.   There’s more important things to spend money on, IMO.

So, anyway…I found a way to make my windshield wipers last longer than recommended (every 6 months).   When they start skidding across the windshield, I stop (usually at the gas station) and take them off and 1) switch the right and the left and 2) flip them over so that the end that’s on the top is now on the bottom.

Turning off your car when the wiper blades are upright makes them a little easier to change.

Worked like a champ in the torrential downpour on the way to work this morning.   Voila!   No skidding.

Spriglet #3: OK, this is borderline O.C.D., but it’s something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing. Whenever I get out of my car, I always immediately put my keys in my pocket and then pat my pocket just to here the keys jingle. Guess I started doing it after I locked my keys in my car. Haven’t locked them inside it since.

Spriglet #2: After a long and strenuous evening of impromptu furniture move-age, you’re shocked to notice the scattered carpet divots all over the room. Simply place an ice cube on each carpet divot and let it melt.   As the carpet dries, the divots pop back up.

Some wise person once said:

Moving your furniture around all the time is a sign of mental instability.

That being said, the carpet divots are really a sign of deeper mental issues. You might want to seek out professional help.

No charge for that one.

h/t: scott

What is a spriglet you ask?

Well, Solomon has his book Proverbs. I have Spriglets — nuggets of wisdom from yours truly.

Spriglet #1: Strategic cereal divots prevent milk overspray. Simply use your finger and make a divot in the middle of your cereal. Aim for the divot when pouring your milk. Voila! No mess.
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